


The Horizon Bright and Endless

by Wandering_Swain



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alien Culture, Cannibalism, Cultural Differences, Dad!Yondu, Declaration of Paternal Love, Drinking, Established Relationship, F/M, Fatherhood, Gen, M/M, Mentions of Pedophilia, Precocious Peter, Puberty, one-sided, stranger danger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 11:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4785065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wandering_Swain/pseuds/Wandering_Swain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yondu didn't stick around Terra long enough to figure out how long a year was or what it meant that Peter has twelve of them. What he does know is that Peter is crew, now, and someone's going to have to explain to him about adulthood, alien taboos, and what happens if he wants to have intergalactic nookie. Unfortunately, not all of his crew is fit to be trusted.</p><p>"The talk" with a side of alien culture clashes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Horizon Bright and Endless

**Author's Note:**

> No beta-reader so all mistakes mine. Please let me know if you see any. Also, is the word, "squick" still a thing in fandom?

Peter referred to himself as “12-years old, probably,” but Yondu hadn’t stuck around long enough on Earth to count how long a year was. The rest of the crew assumed it was roughly as long as a standard year as regarded by Xandar, but Yondu knew there was no fucking way to prove that. By Nova standard years, Yondu was 52 years old; by the standards of his birth planet, where the seasons were quick and blustery, he was maybe 220, at least.

This made it hard to figure out how much of a child Peter was. Yondu knew the kid was growing, firstly, and didn’t seem likely to stop until he hit the height of the crew, if not above it.

Peter was also having Thoughts. His eyes lingered on the female members of the Ravagers for a little too long, sometimes, and he gave shy, red-faced glances at the men and agender folk, too. On nights Kraglin wasn’t visiting for a good time with Yondu, he bunked in the same room as the kid and complained that there were “sounds” that rocked his hammock most nights before he fell asleep.

But Yondu knew you could have all the desires and none of the know-how.

At that point, Ki was still part of the Ravagers. She was a Xandarian and one of his best shots, wore a thick, angry blaster scar proudly from eye to jaw, and chugged the sauce first thing in the morning and last thing at night. He doubted he had ever seen her while she was sober. Many Ravagers kept alcohol in their bunk, though, and the ones that didn’t were as clumsy or forgetful as the ones that did. As long as she got the job done and called him Captain, he figured it didn’t matter much.

Peter took a shine to her. Yondu assumed this had to do with her heavy chest and how she would often take her shirt off when she worked in the engine room. To his understanding, Peter’s culture barred people from going around without top coverings.

Yondu didn’t much understand it. When he asked Peter why people weren’t allowed, the kid seemed at a loss as to “why.” Something about nipples and how that’s where milk came from.

“What?” Yondu snorted. “They produce milk all the time?”

“No! Just some of them some of the time.”

“You make milk?”

Peter flushed and looked pissed off.

Yondu laughed.

He had been travelling the galaxy a long time. He didn’t know why some cultures developed the taboos they did. This planet was fine with people going about buck-naked but thought sexual intercourse with other species was “barbarian,” that planet didn’t care who or what you lay with but was repulsed when people grew hair on their chins. Who knew?

Truth be told, Yondu was a bit confused why cannibalism was so often forsworn against. Most folks where he grew up on Centauri IV knew that when someone died, the spirit was gone. The body would just be consumed by the elements, anyway. Might as well get your fill when there was a draught. It didn’t make a lick of sense to him the way some people got on and how they followed the rules they did.

Xandar wasn’t too keen on cannibalism but most of the governments there were firm on the age of consent being “full-grown adult.” Ki didn’t seem to have heard.

It came up over drinks when they docked at a space station in the Theta Quadrant. Peter had mess hall duty and was still on the ship, cleaning.

Yondu had a habit of making sure Peter had chores when they were off exploring new terrain or on missions to reclaim refuse. He didn’t much let the kid set foot outside unless he was sure there was nothing Peter could do there to get in trouble. He suspected the kid had already snuck out a few times.

Ki started chatting about him to Yondu.

“I like his skin,” she slurred. “Smooth. I want to touch it. You noticed he’s been hanging around the engine room for the past few days, haven’t you?”

“Weeks,” said Yondu. Gods knew Ki didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary unless someone had moved her blaster or taken her money.

“Well, he’s been hanging around, and I think he wants some.” She looked proud, like the attention of a sweaty child was something to be proud of rather than tolerated. “He asks me questions. Looks at my chest like he wants to touch, too.”

“You know what age he is, don’t you?”

“He’s old enough to want it, he’s old enough to get it.” Ki wiped some beer foam from the corner of her mouth and licked it off her fingers. “He told me he thinks boys on Terra screw when they hit the eighth grade, whatever that means, and he thinks he’s at least as old as that.”

“You already been talking to him, then.”

She laughed. “I invited him up to my room for a drink. Just one! He coughed after and had to leave.”

“Really?”

“Come on! He’s itching for it. He looks moon-eyed whenever anyone pays him any attention. You should hear him talk about you. I think he wants to climb in your bunk when you’re not entertaining yourself with Kraglin.”

Yondu leaned close. “What the hell you doing, Ki? You got your pick of men in every port where we land.”

“He’s right there, isn’t he?”

“Sweet gods, you’re serious!”

“Age is a state of mind.”

“His mind is still wet.”

“And it don’t matter what you fuck in space unless someone snitches on you to whatever authorities are policing that area. You going to snitch on me? Because we removed that fella’s fingers last night with wire strippers, Captain. You gonna sit here and tell me that’s better?”

Yondu maintained the guy was a filthy crook and deserved that and worse.

Instead, he stood. “You can’t keep sauce in your room no more.”

Ki choked. “Excuse you?”

“It’s against my regulations.”

“No one follows that one! Not even you!”

“Tough. You keep alcohol in your room from now on, I’ll throw your ass out.” He left the bar.

Yondu never caught Ki drinking again mainly because she left to join another outfit within the week. Her cousin was a space pirate and a competitor of the Ravagers.

Kraglin complained that they had lost a good sniper and wouldn’t climb into bed with him for a few nights for being a “damn stubborn hypocrite.”

The mechanic whined they had one less body to patch the engine when she was acting up.

Peter looked upset the day she left. Yondu waited for him to bring it up, but the boy didn’t say diddly for about a year.

Then Peter was in Yondu’s cabin, trying his damndest to make casual conversation. He knew exactly how many red-faced glances the kid had tossed his way recently, though.

“Hey. So.” Peter scuffed his shoe against the floor. “What happened to Ki?”

“Joined with another crew. Last I checked, her ship was caught in the business end of a meteor shower. Started shooting at it, I heard, because she was so trashed.”

“Oh. Did you think she was weird?”

“Did you?”

“Yeah.”

“You were sorry to see her go at the time.” Yondu knew he followed the laws fast and loose around here. She had been right about that. If Peter really liked her, really wanted it, he wondered if he should have just let them go at it. It repulsed him, but maybe Terrans just didn’t care.

“She put her arms around me a lot.” Peter looked sort of uncomfortable, now, pulling his ear. “Did she ever do that to you?”

Again and again, Yondu learned it was best to trust his instincts. “You ever have someone do that and you don’t want to be touched, you tell them to back off, okay? Or come and get me.”

Peter frowned. “I can take care of myself. Kraglin taught me to fire a blaster years ago.”

“You can’t always reach for one.”

“Maybe I don’t always want to! Ki treated me like an adult.” Peter swallowed. “She offered to make a man of me.”

“Is that what it means on your planet?”

“Yes.” Maybe the boy was lying about his culture, but he looked sure in himself.

Fuck.

“Kraglin teach you anything else besides firing a blaster?”

“Why would he? What about?”

“What do you think? He explain sexin’ to you or not?”

“‘Sexin’?’ You want me to sex with him?”

“No.”

“Good.” Peter looked away, pink. “If it has to be anyone who does the one on one teaching, I’d prefer it to be you.”

“Oh Gods! Snuff that out right the hell now.”

Peter’s face fell. “Why? You hate me?”

“I’m near to it.”

“Do you really think it’s going to hurt me if we do...stuff?”

“Yes. You can’t even say it.”

“Fine! Fucking! The rest of the crew talk about fucking all the time, every pleasure moon, every port, every casino. And I can never go out there with them, even if it’s none of those things. I feel old enough.”

“Not the same as actually being old enough.” Now Yondu was sure Peter was still a child on his planet. His idea of sex was too abstract. “What if you run into someone like Ki, who’s too touchy and won’t give a shit about what you have to say or not?”

“That’s what I’m saying.” Peter looked frustrated. “If we do it, if it’s someone I know, if it’s you, you’ll show me. And I can say I’ve done it. It doesn’t have to be forbidden, or anything. I just need to know what it is.”

Yondu took hold of Peter’s jaw between his thumb and forefinger. “Let me tell you about ‘forbidden,’ boy. I love you.”

Peter’s eyes grew wide.

“I love you the way I love coffee the first thing in the morning, the way I feel about landing on a new planet where I’ve never been before and looking out at the firmament, the horizon bright and endless. I could exist without you and those things, sure, but my life would be the poorer for it. I mean all of you, too, not just the parts I like. Your music and your idiocy, your obsessions and your adoration.”

“Yondu, I, um.”

“On Centauri IV, I was born to the Zoaton. They don’t got a lot of nonsense rules, but to take the love of someone you’ve helped mold in your image and make it manipulative? Break a child into a lover? The Zoaton believe, rightly to my mind, that that murders the soul.”

Peter actually rolled his eyes.

Yondu wasn’t too pleased with that. “Fine. I’ve seen planets where they’re more than fine with generations intermingling. Some people want to see a bit of a guardian or child in their lover, but me? No. Fuck no. I was never made to bend that way.”

“Oh.” Peter looked shamefaced, now.

Yondu pressed a dry kiss to Peter’s forehead, which caused the boy to choke. He then patted him on the shoulder twice. “And anyway, even if I did want to do something like that to you, I’m warming my bed with Kraglin. He’d murder me.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

Peter rubbed his forehead, which was all blotchy from the blood rising to the surface. “God damn it. I’m an idiot.”

“An enormous idiot."

“Wow. Thanks.”

“I can make you less of an idiot, at least.” Yondu sat him down and went to grab the box under his bed. “Anyone with any sense in this galaxy who wants to fuck has a kit.”

“What?”

Yondu showed him the range of saliva-activated, color-changing tabs, the ones that showed your bio-compatibility. “Sometimes, you’ll find a perfect interstellar entity. Shiny skin, sweet tentacles, beautiful gills, don’t matter. Hell, the guy might even be you-shaped. He also might be a member of a species who, when you mix their fluids with yours, will melt your face and genitals off. You get that, sometimes. Worst I’ve ever gotten is a rash. I still have the scars from it, but you know.”

Yondu told him about the Omega Quadrant and the mating practices there. “For life. Hormones or something. Pretty damn hot, if you’re into it, but the ecology of some of the planets plays with your body in, well. We had a Kree on our crew with, to my knowledge, reproductive organs that made babies but didn’t carry them. Came back pregnant anyway. He’s very happy with his daughter on Hala, but yeah. Protection.”

“I guess I’ll need that?”

“To be safe, sure. I don’t think you’ll be able to make a baby with anyone you meet, I’m afraid to say. You’re a different species than most. Unless you meet another Terran, you’re unlucky to be a daddy any time soon.”

Then he gave Peter a hazy run-down of the cultures he knew of with different consent practices. There were four he knew of where you had to ask permission three times before doing it. The penalty for anything less ranged from prison to “mating appendage removal.”

Yondu even talked about the cultures that had uploaded their collective consciousness to artificial intelligence systems. Sex with twenty billion people at once was not only possible but, Yondu assured him, a real trip.

Peter looked pretty damn scared to take the kit when Yondu was done, but he took it anyway.

“As a man,” said Yondu, “I’ll trust your discretion.”

Peter twisted in a funny little grimace. Yondu couldn’t say with any confidence the boy wouldn’t start running after anyone any time soon, but at least he’d take a moment to think twice.

That night, Kraglin crawled into bed with Yondu. Instead of touching or murmuring innuendos until they fucked, he curled up like a big cat around him.

“What’s this?”

“Was talking to Peter, today.”

There it was. “Aw, damn it. I was trying to tell him how it was. That’s all.”

Now Kraglin was blushing all hard. But oh man, he grinned. “He said I must have liked you something special if sex was such a massive inconvenience for everyone.”

“Because it is.” Yondu laid back.

“Aw, Captain. Come on.”

“And so I’m not sharing my sheets with no one but someone I want to be with for sure.”

Kraglin’s smile was shy and dopey.Their sloppy kissing and the hurried lovemaking after was so sweet, it could have given them cavities.

Yondu made a note to himself to let Peter out for an away mission next time they docked. He wasn’t learning anything stuck in the ship all day. Too long by himself wasn’t healthy for a kid his age, whatever it was.


End file.
